My only problem with this is that the term cycle is already strongly tied to technology in the form of CPU cycles, and are vastly smaller than a second. They are also not fixed and keep getting shorter as technology advances.

An excellent submission. Love all the details.
The plot is good except for the forced nature of the shoot-down. I wouldn't expose the PCs own ship to a forced loss - better they be on some form of McCarron provided transport that gets knocked out of the air. If the PCs are in charge of flying and defense, you may have to 'force' them to fail at defense, especially against the crap fighters. I would personally hate that.

This is a top-notch article here. Can't add more other then to say thank you for this article. I have read a lot of WWII history and although I knew what the Enigma machine was, I really did not clearly understand how it worked. This helps immensely!Go to Comment

I'd leave that up for the DM of course :) And yes, one could omit the safeties such as being usable only outdoors and not being able to enclose things in rock-strong cloud. Then they become dangerous indeed.

Great article. I also like the idea of treating Mind Control as basically a form of illusion. It has the disadvantage of requiring notes/private chats/etc to implement fully though.

Willingly playing out the effects of mind-control should provide some form of reward to the player, even in the case it leads to their character's demise. Perhaps some form of boon on their next character.